If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Yesterday, we finished StartupWeekend Cambodia here in Phnom Penh, a ‘no talk, all action’ competition centered around building and launching (and potentially funding) a startup company in 54 hours. My team won! 
All of the concepting, creating, mentoring and pitching was great inspiration, particularly since I will be pitching my venture idea – as promised – for the Final Exam of this Personal Social Entrepreneurship MBA.
And now, after a 54-hour business-building break, let’s get back to the Syllabus.
Today I have a story to share – it is full of a lot of questions. I’m not sure I have the answers, but I think it’s a good place to start.
Let’s talk about chasing power lines.
—————————-
One evening last January, just after officially moving to Phnom Penh, I stumbled across an intriguing concept. The very next day I hopped on a bus to head to Battambang for the first time…to chase this question:
Is this a viable business idea?
Somewhere in the middle of a 6 hour bus ride, I remember feeling…
(1) intense exhilaration = because this is exactly what I want to be doing,
(2) immense gratitude = because I’m amazed I am actually doing it,
(3) and what the hell am I doing! = because, well…I really had no idea what I was doing.
The idea I was chasing was from reading an article in Fast Company about husk power – an energy system that can generate electric power in off-grid rural areas using discarded rice husk as fuel. 
Husk Power Systems is a for-profit social enterprise out of Bihar, India. HPS is pioneering several concepts and systems via their mission to provide reliable, renewable, affordable electricity to millions of people.
In my mind, they are outstanding – a statement which necessitates the question: Why? By what definition or criteria?
What makes an social venture outstanding?
Excited to figure it all out, I arrived in Battambang which is Cambodia’s rice-farming capital. Trying to evaluate whether there was an opportunity with electricity + social enterprise in Cambodia – I poured over Cambodia’s government electrification plans, past NGO reports, and anything I could find regarding Husk Power Systems’ operations in India, wondering…
Can that innovation and approach be replicated here?
To do my research, I spent several days camped out in Kinyei Café just as they were getting their start – those fantastic early days, when menus were written on white paper with a Sharpie, and staff were still taste-testing their own creations to perfection. 
During that time I heard about a biodigester project somewhere outside of Battambang. I had found a lead! A lead for finding out more. But I had no idea where the location was, and I couldn’t find it on any maps, and I knew only a few words in Khmer.
Thankfully, I was introduced me to Racky Thy. Racky grew up in that province and knew the ropes, so we set off on his motorbike to find the project site.
And find it we did – what was left of it. There was a only a sign, denoting the abandoned space. 
It was shut down. Empty. We deducted that they may have closed down, had the area became grid-connected. If we were being optimistic, we would have hoped that it closed because the project had already achieved its goals. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep myself from going straight to thinking…
Why did the project fail?
I had found some information about the project’s investment and exciting beginnings, but I did not find information about its end.
I found myself wishing for dialogue about what happened, since learning from others’ projects has been the most invaluable part of my journey thus far.
But, because I found myself presuming this project’s failure (before even talking to anyone!), it made me realize that I really needed to get the whole story first before I started forming my opinions. Rather than make assumptions…
Why not go to the source and ask?
[Now, friends, I have not yet followed up to collect the whole story. So today, I am committing to go the next step - to seek out this week the project administrators themselves. I bet they have a really interesting story. So stay tuned for an update on this one…]
I wondered – with this projects, with others – in our efforts and experiments and greatest attempts at tackling issues surrounding poverty…what is the true effect of these actions within the communities we want to be helping.
What is the impact?
From a failed project. From a successful one. On who? And how can we know? (And… who is ‘we,’ anyway?)
We continued to be curious that day. We chased the powerlines down the dirt road. We were looking for a community where the power lines stopped. If people are not getting their electricity from the biodigester OR from the grid, how do people get electricity into their homes? 
“Cambodian snow,” Racky joked as we choked on red dust from a truck passing our motorbike on the way.
Far out into the countryside, we stopped at numerous houses. We interrupted the mid-afternoon conversations of farmers and families to inquire where their electricity was coming from.
How are people currently solving the problem?
We finally found a family with two Japanese diesel engines tucked away (out of sight but never out of ear-shot) in a wooden shed behind their home. 
The diesel engines go on at certain hours throughout the day, and families’ homes are connected to the diesel system via the power lines – infrastructure that his been developed but not yet connected to the grid system.
The woman showed us how it all worked, and explained it was a difficult business – a lot of hard work.
People were also stopping by to drop off car batteries for recharging, used like small generators inside the homes to power small appliances like the television and light fixtures. 
It was quite a system.
Of course, an entrepreneur must wonder…
Is there a better way?
And would people value it; care about it; pay for it?
Is there a market opportunity here – could a solution be created that is socially and environmentally better than the current alternatives?
As clear as it was that I was looking at a system for accessing electricity – it was as foreign to me as I was to them.
I thought more about Husk Power in India – how it was created by founders who came from the place in which they started their venture.
Who am I to be here?
Is it actually a good thing? Is it really any of my business? What do I know?
We hopped back on the moto and went back towards town.
The sun beat on my back. The dust blew in my face and I was wishing I had thought to bring a kromah just when Racky turned his head to ask me – surprised I didn’t know better – Why didn’t you bring a kromah!? 
I have so much to learn.
And there are simply some things I will never really know much about.
I am constantly sitting in the vastness of things I do not know. It is very humbling, liberating, fascinating to have days when I realize…wow, I know nothing.
Maybe that is how we realize it is time to empty the cup.
So, I wondered as I pondered the day’s events…now that I know I don’t know...
Where could this lead me?
—————————-
One of my greatest first lessons in social entrepreneurship has been this:
Spend a day chasing power lines, see where it leads you.
****Update: How ironic…news from the same day in the Phnom Penh Post: “Bio-fuelled power plant to go online” at a rice mill in Kampong Speu. Perhaps we’ll have to go check it out…
